His father, younger brother of the Emperor’s friend Henry, was called William the Rich.  He was, however, only rich in children.  Of these he had five sons and seven daughters by his wife Juliana of Stolberg.  She was a person of most exemplary character and unaffected piety.  She instilled into the minds of all her children the elements of that devotional sentiment which was her own striking characteristic, and it was destined that the seed sown early should increase to an abundant harvest.  Nothing can be more tender or more touching than the letters which still exist from her hand, written to her illustrious sons in hours of anxiety or anguish, and to the last, recommending to them with as much earnest simplicity as if they were still little children at her knee, to rely always in the midst of the trials and dangers which were to beset their paths through life, upon the great hand of God.  Among the mothers of great men, Juliana of Stolberg deserves a foremost place, and it is no slight eulogy that she was worthy to have been the mother of William of Orange and of Lewis, Adolphus, Henry, and John of Nassau.

At the age of eleven years, William having thus unexpectedly succeeded to such great possessions, was sent from his father’s roof to be educated in Brussels.  No destiny seemed to lie before the young prince but an education at the Emperor’s court, to be followed by military adventures, embassies, viceroyalties, and a life of luxury and magnificence.  At a very early age he came, accordingly, as a page into the Emperor’s family.  Charles recognized, with his customary quickness, the remarkable character of the boy.  At fifteen, William was the intimate, almost confidential friend of the Emperor, who prided himself, above all other gifts, on his power of reading and of using men.  The youth was so constant an attendant upon his imperial chief that even when interviews with the highest personages, and upon the gravest affairs, were taking place, Charles would never suffer him to be considered superfluous or intrusive.  There seemed to be no secrets which the Emperor held too high for the comprehension or discretion of his page.  His perceptive and reflective faculties, naturally of remarkable keenness and depth, thus acquired a precocious and extraordinary development.  He was brought up behind the curtain of that great stage where the world’s dramas were daily enacted.  The machinery and the masks which produced the grand delusions of history had no deceptions for him.  Carefully to observe men’s actions, and silently to ponder upon their motives, was the favorite occupation of the Prince during his apprenticeship at court.  As he advanced to man’s estate, he was selected by the Emperor for the highest duties.  Charles, whose only merit, so far as the provinces were concerned, was in having been born in Ghent, and that by an ignoble accident, was glad to employ this representative of so many great Netherland houses, in the defence of